Tagline: A valuable resource for serious Magic players or those of us who just like the art.

Let me start by explaining why I own this book.

I first encountered the phenomenon which is known as Magic the Gathering later than many of the other diehards in this industry. It was late 1993 when I first heard about the game and bought my first starter decks. I had missed the wonderful financial investment those early Alpha and Beta decks would have been (we had already entered the Unlimited Edition, which wasn’t). I had even missed the first expansion deck, Arabian Nights. Thus it was that I had my first exposure to the feeding frenzy of collectorism with the arrival of the second expansion deck, Antiquities.

It is important, I think, to remind people that this was back when the industry had lost its mind over these cards. Wizards of the Coast had proven themselves incompetent at printing to the actual demand (whether intentionally or not) and so stores were routinely ordering far more copies than they actually thought they could possibly sell (which would eventually bite everybody in the ass when Fallen Empires finally did manage to print themselves to fill all the orders from distributors). This was back when people when people were putting themselves on reserve lists for dozens of cases of cards.

Now, I liked Magic, too. Not so much for the gameplay (although it was very original and intriguing) or for the potential of deckbuilding (which didn’t appeal to me at all), but because I thought the cards were really cool. I found it interesting to look at the strange creatures and locations and spells described by these cards and have my imagination stirred by these brief glimpses and descriptions.

I did a little mathematical analysis and discovered that to get a complete set of Antiquities cards it would require the purchase of a single case. (Actually I took a random guess.) So I laid out the $70 necessary to buy the case (gah!) and, after tearing open dozens upon dozens of booster packs, finally put together my “complete set”.

And then I decided it just wasn’t worth it. I still liked the cards, I still liked the art, I still liked these little windows into the world of Dominia. I just couldn’t afford to drop $70 every couple of months (or $140+ considering that the next expansion set, IIRC, had twice as many cards). I’d rather buy, say, half a dozen roleplaying manuals with that money. Or twenty-eight paperback books.

Since that time I’ve always wished that Wizards of the Coast would publish the cards in some non-collectible, non-playable form which would let me collect the cards without going bankrupt at the same time. The Collector’s Editions they released a couple years ago were close, but ironically they were priced higher than they should have been (because they were a “special edition”), so they were still too expensive for my tastes.

Now we fast-forward five years to about six months ago when I first spotted the Official Encyclopedia on the shelf. Flipping through it I saw they had finally produced what I wanted. All of the cards produced up until 7/96 are reproduced at slightly smaller than original size, along with version notes, and some analytical text.

The book also includes a forward by Richard Garfield, an historical look at Magic, errata for the cards, misprints and oddities, promotional cards, an index for deckbuilder’s, and an index for the entire book.

So I own it because its really nice having all these cards gathered together at an affordable price. It would have been nice if the artwork had been reproduced at full size, but I won’t be too picky on that point.

It is also an interesting (if brief read) for it’s non-fiction coverage of the history of Magic.

Finally, it has a set of useful tools for deckbuilders (“professional” or otherwise).

All around this is a very nice book which fulfills a number of different roles for a number of different people. I hope it gets an update in a few years to make it more current.

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Author: Editors of Duelist
Company/Publisher: Carlton Books
Cost: n/a
Page count: 225
ISBN: 1-85868-240-1

Originally Posted: 1999/05/28

In the years since I reviewed it, this encyclopedia has, in fact, been expanded with a half dozen additional volumes and at least one new edition listing more than 7,200 cards. In recent years, of course, the internet has rendered efforts like this utterly obsolete: A quick Google search will turn up multiple sites indexing every MtG card in existence. Back in 1999, I would have salivated at the thought of it. (And, in fact, I probably did.)

I think this review also provides an excellent example of how a reviewer can bring a peculiarly idiosyncratic point of view to their treatment of a product: Most people picking up this encyclopedia would have probably been using it for deckbuilding, not lore-delving. But this is why the reviewer’s first duty to their audience is to clearly communicate their point of view while also supplying enough information about the product that those with different view points can (hopefully) intuit what their own opinions of the product might be.

MtG cards remain a wonderful goldmine of creativity that can easily be stripmined for your next D&D adventure. I’ve done it at least a half dozen times and I’ll almost certainly do it again. (As inspiration goes, it’s hard to beat a dollop of evocative text combined with lavish illustration.)

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

I’ve been saying for years that the RPG market has been suffering because it no longer has a gateway product: An affordable, complete product that looks like a game, doesn’t require a lot of invested time to play, is available in mainstream markets, and isn’t a paid preview for a different product.

A couple years ago, this prompted me to say that the D&D product line needed to feature “a single, consistent box that says ‘DUNGEONS & DRAGONS’ on the front cover.” (See the rest of my imaginary D&D Core Sets here.)

And earlier this month Mike Mearls wrote, “This brings us to the second big picture goal [for D&D Next]. We’re going to make an RPG product called Dungeons & Dragons. It will be the game, Dungeons & Dragons, not just a sampler or a game that guides you through making a character and playing a single adventure. You can buy D&D and play a full, tabletop RPG campaign. You will be able to start playing, regardless of experience, and will easily find other products to migrate to if you so desire.” (And it sounds like the “migrate” thing will be the result of other products offering modular additions, although we’ll have to wait and see.)

Holy shit.

Meanwhile, the ICv2 RPG bestseller lists for more than a year have consistently included Dragon Age as one of the Top 5 RPGs. (Summer 2012, Spring 2012, Q4 2011, Summer 2011, Q2 2011, Q1 2011) Although these Dragon Age players don’t seem to be present on traditional RPG forums, the game is clearly a quiet and persistent hit. (Which perhaps suggests, if we wanted to get really, really speculative, that the people buying Dragon Age aren’t traditional RPG fans.)

I mention this because Wil Wheaton just quietly announced that Dragon Age is going to feature in the two-part season finale of his Tabletop web-series. And according to multiple, reliable reports any game featured on Tabletop enjoys a huge boom in sales.

And Dragon Age already features the type of introductory product I’ve been arguing for and D&D appears to be returning to.

Meanwhile, hobby games in general have been enjoying three years of explosive growth. Board and card games have been leading that growth with RPGs only making up a small part of it, but it suggests that the market for games played face-to-face and around the table is ripe and ready.

So call me crazy if you’d like, but stitching all of this together I’m going to make a bold prediction: Over the next 12-24 months, RPGs are going to experience a boom in sales. And this boom has the potential to enjoy a critical chain reaction if the release of D&D Next is handled perfectly and if auxiliary factors like the Pathfinder MMO are successful at the right time and in the right way.

Microscope is a fractal storytelling game by Ben Robbins which allows you and your friends to collaboratively create vast, fictional histories: The rise and fall of galactic empires; the vast sweep of barbarian hordes; the byzantine rule of magical emperors.

The core of the game focuses on the creation of Periods, Events, and Scenes: Periods describe large swaths of time. Events are specific things that happen within each Period. And Scenes are designed to answer specific questions about particular Events.

This isn’t a review, so I’m not going to go into a great amount of detail. But what makes the game work is that it mechanically disrupts both planning (thus forcing you to improvise) and creative ownership (so that players don’t split up and all work in their own private turfs). I highly recommend it.

What I’m presenting here today is the “log” from the first session of Microscope I ever played, back from when the game was still in playtest. (As a tip: I would recommend not including ubiquitous time travel in your first game of Microscope. It was fun, but it also broke our brains.)

THE TIME PORTALS OF MARS

TIME PORTALS OPEN ON MARS

• Titanic Machines emerge from the Portals and begin killing off native fauna.
• The Qzelti, a group of native martians, evade machines and travel through Time Portals to Earth.

THE CLOSING OF THE TIME PORTALS WAR

• Creation of a coalition between native and immigrant populations to study the portals.
• Defector from Qzelti discloses to Martian scientist that the only way to close time portals is through suicide attack.
• Time portals destroyed through kamikaze strikes.

ERA OF CRYSTALLINE CITY-STATES

• Time echo kamikaze ghost utters technomantic prophecies of crystalline machines
• Titanic Machines construct the crystalline cities.
• In search of immortality, the native martian population integrate biological life with Titanic Machines.
• Anti-immortalists in native martian population, after proests of creation of bitanicals fail, head underground to start new civilization in ancient underground cities.
• Schizoid meme plague strands early bitanicals in narcissistic virtual worlds born out of self-destructive mental dominance wars. Rusting hulks litter the Dust Seas where they migrate aimlessly.
• Kamikaze Cult, in a martiatarian effort, genetically engineer dinosaurs as cheap slave labor.
• The kamikaze’s dinosaur slaves stage global riot, shaking all crystalline cities to the ground.

AGE OF THE DINOSAUR EMPIRE UNDER THE GOD-KINGS

• Martian-machine bitanicals become sentient and the new dinosaur populist lords begin to worship them.
• Kamikaze cultists declared anathema by Ulric I, founder of the Dinosaur Empire.
• Lone bitanical rescues last Qzelti from Dinosaur prisons and they retreat to caverns in the Deep South.

ERA OF UNDERGROUND CITIES (THE PRESERVING WARMTH)

• Dinosaur scholars discover time portal research notes 5,000 feet underground.

RENAISSANCE OF TIME PORTAL TECHNOLOGY

• Scientists discover time portals have created run-away planetary cooling.
• Anti-Global Cooling Fanatics invent Titanic Machines and send them to assassinate time portal scientists.
• Fringe scientists discover proof that ancient Kamikaze strikers did, in fact, survive the destruction of time portals.
• Dr. Kimchee is surprised to discover a time ghost of his favorite guinea pig appear in his lab after sending him through a time portal!
• Bitanical assistance to Dr. Kimchee infuses time portal with decelerated muon gel causing time rifts to rupture, sending all underground cities to the distant past.
• Kamikaze anathemists emerge from Shard Sea (remnants of crystal cities) leading the temporally tri-furcated army of cloned time ghosts to heal temporal rifts.
• Resusciated bitanicals mindwipe remaining dinosaurs of the empire and throw them through time portals to ancient Earth.

REMAINS OF EMPIRE ESCAPE FREEZING PLANET

Tagline: Who can resist a card game where you’re competing to see who can decapitate and execute the most people?

I have to admit that I sickened of the collectible trading card market before getting beyond my first addictive encounter with Magic the Gathering. After spending $70 to get a complete set of one of the early supplement sets I realized I had spent $70 to get a bunch of cards which, if WotC wasn’t actively attempting to rip off its consumers, should have only cost $15 to get and wouldn’t have created a detritus of cardboard. I also thought about how much potential enjoyment I was going to get out of that $70 investment and realized the money could be better spent just about anywhere else I cared to think about spending it. As a result of these bad experiences I ignored the card section of the roleplaying store entirely.

Ironically, however, it was Wizards of the Coast which brought me back over there once more with their highly addictive game Twitch. I am very glad they did this because in addition to the other three games in the WotC’s line of “family card games” this was also where my store was keeping the excellent line of Atlas card games (Once Upon a Time, Lunch Money, Spammers, etc.), but also all of the Cheapass Games. So, although I have not since returned to CCGs (and never will, although I am occasionally tempted to just pick up the starter decks – which would render them into normal card games for all intents and purposes) I have discovered one positive spin-off from them: They’ve gotten people experimenting with alternate types of games and they’ve also (re)introduced a number of mechanics which have been adapted into many interesting uses (notably the concept of having cards with unique instructions guide gameplay).

So when I picked up a copy of Guillotine I was looking forward to getting a chance to play it. I wasn’t disappointed. Here’s the basic mechanics:

Each player represents an executioner during the French Revolution. Your goal is to be the guy with the best bragging rights when you go back to the locker room at the end of things – so you want to be responsible for bagging the biggest heads around. The game is made of up three days. On each day twelve nobles are lined up for execution (twelve noble cards are laid down sequentially from left to right). Play goes around the table and consists of each player playing a single action card (if they so desire) and then taking the noble card which is first in line, so to speak. When all the nobles have been executed the day comes to an end. Each noble card has a point value and the action cards modify gameplay in various ways (changing the order in which the nobles are executed, effecting point totals of nobles, etc.). The goal, therefore, is to play your action cards in such a way that by the end of the three days you have the highest point total.

The game, it must be admitted right from the start, will never be addictive enough in the way that RoboRally or Twitch are in order to get a strong following of support. The concept is original and intriguing, but the mechanics (while being very good and providing strong gameplay) simply don’t grab you strongly enough.

The place where this product really shines, though, are the card designs. Illustrated by Quinton Hoover and Mike Raabe under the direction of Christopher Rush the cards are cartoony in style, original, creative, and (most importantly) funny. The action cards are more than amusing, but the caricatures of the noble cards are drop-dead hilarious, if you’ll pardon the pun. The Piss Boy card, in particular, became the favorite of the group I played with.

Overall I can say that I strongly recommend this game. Although it can’t be counted among the “best of the best”, it definitely deserves recognition.

Style: 5
Substance: 4

Writers: Paul Peterson
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Price: n/a
Page Count: n/a
ISBN: 1-57530-534-8

Originally Posted: 1999/04/13

Unlike Before I Kill You, Mister Bond…, which I reviewed around this same time, Guillotine still sees occasional play at my house. Of the other games I mentioned in this review, Twitch, RoboRally, and Lunch Money still get played a lot. Looking at my reviews for these games with the benefit of a decade’s hindsight, I’m actually quite pleased that I was generally fairly accurate in picking out the long-term winners from the short-term losers.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Tagline: Cheapass Games are cool. Bad Bond jokes are cool. This game is cool. You cool with that? Or do I have to kill you in a bizarre, drawn out fashion which will leave plenty of opportunities to escape?

“Imagine, just once, luring the master spy into your evil lair and putting a bullet in his head. Imagine resisting the temptation to gloat over your prize, to tell him your secret plans, to let him escape certain death and blow up your lair in the process. Imagine winning.

Yeah, right.

Before I kill you, Mister Bond, I am going to tell you my entire life story, because I believe that you are the only man alive who would understand…”

I’ve been hearing good things about Cheapass Games for quite awhile now, but only last month did I finally find a store which sells them. Whoa boy, has it been worth the wait. Before I Kill You, Mister Bond… is one of the coolest games I’ve ever played, simply because its conceptual basis is so excellent for a game among friends.

For those who haven’t been let in on the secret yet, Cheapass Games produces games with ultra-original concepts and mechanics on very cheap materials so that they can keep the prices down. Do not confuse “cheap” with poor in quality, though. Before I Kill You, Mister Bond… comes in a handsomely designed white paper envelope which has been printed with a simple, but elegant cover. The instructions take up both sides of a single sheet of paper and there are two decks of cards – one printed on yellowish card stock, the other on greenish card stock. Everything is professionally put together and printed – it just doesn’t come in a cardboard box with laminated cards. Games, as their mission statement says, are fun because of how they’re designed – not because of the clever pieces of plastic with which they come. The pay-off to you is that Cheapass Games are just that – cheap as hell. If Before I Kill You, Mister Bond… was produced like most other games it would cost $20, not $5.

The concept of the game is simple: You take on the role of a super-villain in the classic James Bond tradition – massive secret bases, advanced technological wonders, and master plans… all ruined by our need to design Rube Goldberg machines to kill off the super-spy who comes after us. (Anyone who has seen Austin Powers knows the joke.)

The deck is made of three types of cards — lairs, spies, and doublers. The spies are a different color in order to make them easy to find… “just like in real life. ‘Hi! I’m Doctor Kelley! Any messages for me? Say, I’m a Spy!’” Each player is dealt a hand of cards and play begins in a clockwise manner.

Each turn consists of two phases. In the first phase you can play a single lair card from your own hand. Lair cards have different point values and the value of your lair is the point total of all the lair cards you have played. In the second phase you can play a spy card – either from your hand, anyone else’s hand, or from the top of the deck. You can also play a team of spies from your own hand (but not anyone else’s or the top of the deck). You play the spy cards against a particular lair – either your own, or someone else’s. Each spy has a point value (a team of spies has a point value equal to their total). If that value is larger than the lair then the spy infiltrates the lair and destroys it. If that value is smaller or equal to the value of the lair then the spy is captured.

Once a spy is captured the owner of the lair can either kill the spy or taunt the spy. If they kill the spy they score the number of points the spy is worth. The other option is to play a doubler card, which will double the value of the spy. Each doubler card is printed with a letter and has a matching doubler card with an identical letter somewhere else in the deck. If a doubler card is played it can be challenged by its matched pair. If this challenge takes place the spy escapes and the lair is destroyed.

So, overall, your goal is to build a lair with which to catch spies and score points. The first person to score 30 points wins the game.

The place where the game really shines, though, is the comedic interaction of the players. The cards are all jokes playing off the spy adventure/thriller genre (the Bond films, The Avengers, etc.). Most notable are the doubler cards – all of which are printed with cheezy super-villain taunts, such as: “I shall taunt you with this deadly weapon, blithely unaware that a child could have untied those ropes by now.” Having the players read these aloud in their best super-villain accents is truly the coolest part of the game.

There is, unfortunately, a massive problem with this game: It doesn’t work. I playtested it using a group of three and then a group of four players (it’s advertised as being for 2-6) and the dynamics and balance of the deck simply don’t work properly to let the rules fully realize themselves. Because spies can be played from essentially anywhere it is impossible to build up teams of spies, because any attempt to do so will invariably have someone else use your spies against you or for themselves. Lairs are difficult to get established (because they are easy to destroy), but once they are established they are almost impossible to destroy because you can’t build up teams of spies. Because there are an equal number of lairs, spies, and doublers in the deck, invariably by the time any sort of serious spy-catching is going on (because the lairs take so long to build up to a point where they can capture spies) everyone has built up a huge reserve of doubler cards – making it infeasible to play any of them (because someone else invariably has the matching card).

In the end these flaws meant that all the games we played (and we played nearly a dozen) went down the exact same route: Most lairs were wiped out repeatedly until one person got a lair large enough so that it couldn’t destroyed. That person then won the game. Very few doublers were ever played, because whenever they were it only resulted in the person’s lair being wiped out.

The rules themselves, IMO, work, but the deck of cards simply isn’t properly balanced. Plus more cards overall would have been nice because the phrases on these got tired pretty quick – and its the panache and cleverness of those phrases which are the primary strength of this game.

Nonetheless, this is a pretty classy game. At $5 it ain’t a bad buy, particularly since you can get quite a few laughs out of it.

Style: 5
Substance: 3

Writers: James Ernest
Publisher: Cheapass Games
Price: $4.95
Page Count: n/a
ISBN: n/a

Originally Posted: 1999/04/13

This is a game I enjoyed playing for about 3 weeks. Then I wrote a review about how much I liked it. Then I never played it again. Games that are fun only because the content on the cards is amusing simply don’t last. (See, also, Munchkin Quest.)

Also: 14 years later, the idea of needing to wait for a game until “finally finding a store that sells them” is simply adorable.

If you’re interested in checking this game out, you should be aware that Cheapass Games got hit with a cease-and-desist order in 2000. The game is now marketed as James Ernest’s Totally Renamed Spy Game.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.